Gas & Electricity

Dirty Harry said:
I wouldn’t be too sure about that mate, I’ve had this discussion before many many years ago with a major share holder of British Gas, he claimed the price hike would revert back to its original price eventually, I asserted it wouldn’t because once they have you paying it, they won’t be prepared to lose that profit, it never did revert back, and I doubt we’ll see any significant decrease, unless the public actually put their foot down.
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Time will tell, I guess.
 
Dirty Harry said:
If most of us, barring those who need it for medical reasons, asked them to terminate their gas and electricity supply, they’d fuckin shit themselves.
Back in 2002, my lecturer at college, a retired British Gas exec, was telling us the UK were due to run out of North Sea gas around 2025, but we hit a massive vein which would stand us in good stead until 2075, but we continued to buy our gas from abroad, it was cheap, and we also saved our own, so not fully buying into this shortage shit.
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Gas demand has been falling for years so actually you'd expect prices to fall. The problem is we've just had COVID and getting gas here has been the problem as a lot of it comes on ships and ships for a period weren't sailing. Throw in the war in Ukraine and as at least some % of our gas comes from Russia so there we have a shortage.

There is a second problem which is the governments fault. We used to burn cheap coal for electricity, now we use renewables but they don't generate enough so we fill the gap by burning gas.... This isn't a good idea when gas is so expensive and that's why your lekky tariff is going to double too.

We could start burning coal again and make bills cheaper but how many people will support that?

grid.iamkate.com

National Grid: Live

Shows the live status of Great Britain’s electric power transmission network
grid.iamkate.com grid.iamkate.com
 
Dirty Harry said:
They’re greedy unscrupulous bastards, I walked out of an interview with them many years ago when they asked me to do a role play where basically I scammed a fuckin pensioner into having work done she didn’t need doing, absolutely disgusting company.
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For sure, but they don’t set the prices really. Once shipping returns to normal, the prices should fall.
 
inbetween said:
Gas demand has been falling for years so actually you'd expect prices to fall. The problem is we've just had COVID and getting gas here has been the problem as a lot of it comes on ships and ships for a period weren't sailing. Throw in the war in Ukraine and as at least some % of our gas comes from Russia so there we have a shortage.

There is a second problem which is the governments fault. We used to burn cheap coal for electricity, now we use renewables but they don't generate enough so we fill the gap by burning gas.... This isn't a good idea when gas is so expensive and that's why your lekky tariff is going to double too.

We could start burning coal again and make bills cheaper but how many people will support that?

grid.iamkate.com

National Grid: Live

Shows the live status of Great Britain’s electric power transmission network
grid.iamkate.com grid.iamkate.com
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Not sure if you’re agreeing or disagreeing there mate but my point was we are not reliant on Russian gas supplies, which seems to be the main reasons they’re using for the hikes ?
Alan Harper's Tash said:
For sure, but they don’t set the prices really. Once shipping returns to normal, the prices should fall.
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As above mate, and they may not ‘set’ the prices, but there are influential people who have a financial interest in the prices going up,
www.opendemocracy.net

43 Lords have financial interests in fossil fuel industry

Politicians accused of being ‘worryingly cosy’ with oil and gas firms as it’s revealed almost one in ten Tory peers has financial stake in the sector
www.opendemocracy.net www.opendemocracy.net
 
Dirty Harry said:
If most of us, barring those who need it for medical reasons, asked them to terminate their gas and electricity supply, they’d fuckin shit themselves.
Back in 2002, my lecturer at college, a retired British Gas exec, was telling us the UK were due to run out of North Sea gas around 2025, but we hit a massive vein which would stand us in good stead until 2075, but we continued to buy our gas from abroad, it was cheap, and we also saved our own, so not fully buying into this shortage shit.
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In all honesty I wonder where you would actually stand if you rang the fuckers up and said "come and remove your meters as I'm getting my energy from other resources". I.e parrafin generators or wood stoves etc...

As others have said it's the standing charge that cripples you as well. Even if you still turn everything off our bills would still go up!

Crazy!!!
 
BlueMonkey79 said:
In all honesty I wonder where you would actually stand if you rang the fuckers up and said "come and remove your meters as I'm getting my energy from other resources". I.e parrafin generators or wood stoves etc...

As others have said it's the standing charge that cripples you as well. Even if you still turn everything off our bills would still go up!

Crazy!!!
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As far as I’m aware you have no legal obligation to have a gas and electricity supply to your house, I’ll happily stand corrected though as not looked at it for a while.
 
crystal_mais said:
Yep - if I want a new fix for the next 12 months. We currently pay £175 / month
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crystal_mais said:
Yes - We will definitely be doing all that - We have a 5 bed house but think all Thermostats and everything will be set quite low from now on - be staying on whatever variable tariff they offer as that will most likely mean a 54% increase. These companies will be boasting large profits to their shareholders in 18 months time. Thats what is really pissing me off and the Government are doing feck all about it
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I think the figure that they are quoting you is just to put you off taking a deal. They expect everybody to drop onto the standard variable rate at the moment because the energy companies know they cant offer you a deal that will beat that.
 
Dirty Harry said:
As far as I’m aware you have no legal obligation to have a gas and electricity supply to your house, I’ll happily stand corrected though as not looked at it for a while.
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Probably right on that. Although there may be other legal restrictions in what fuel you can burn if you live in residential areas.

E.g. restrictive covenant in the deeds on your leasehold or freehold property, or tenancy agreement against burning fuel that generates smoke.

Or any laws/regulations created for the sake of environmental and public health, or safety reasons.

Off-grid houses don't have services and don't have people mithering them to connect to services. And owners of self-build houses have to pay to get their services connected.
 
Fode N The Hole said:
Probably right on that. Although there may be other legal restrictions in what fuel you can burn if you live in residential areas.

E.g. restrictive covenant in the deeds on your leasehold or freehold property, or tenancy agreement against burning fuel that generates smoke.

Or any laws/regulations created for the sake of environmental and public health, or safety reasons.

Off-grid houses don't have services and don't have people mithering them to connect to services. And owners of self-build houses have to pay to get their services connected.
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Yes mate there are certain legal requirements in relation to the Environmental Health Authority, I’m in a “smoke free” zone but there are still loads of places up and down the country that aren’t, but even if I wasn’t , I’d still have chosen the smoke free option, but much depends on the borough you live ins policies.

As for the covenants in deeds etc, this may be more your line but I’m pretty sure given most houses were built to burn coal etc I can’t imagine why there would be a huge amount of houses affected or why they’d be there, I d imagine you’re at the mercy of your local authority as in my above paragraph , but happy to be corrected.

What would interest me is where people would stand if they were a private tenant, I can imagine there’d be restrictions in the terms and conditions ?
 
Dirty Harry said:
Not sure if you’re agreeing or disagreeing there mate but my point was we are not reliant on Russian gas supplies, which seems to be the main reasons they’re using for the hikes ?

As above mate, and they may not ‘set’ the prices, but there are influential people who have a financial interest in the prices going up,
www.opendemocracy.net

43 Lords have financial interests in fossil fuel industry

Politicians accused of being ‘worryingly cosy’ with oil and gas firms as it’s revealed almost one in ten Tory peers has financial stake in the sector
www.opendemocracy.net www.opendemocracy.net
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If you think about it we should be using less gas than we did 10 years ago and we are. So some bright spark probably said well let's just move our electricity generation from dirty coal to slightly cleaner gas and gas should even be cheaper.... But then along came COVID and the war in Ukraine.

So it's a bit of both really, the prices aren't currently being set to make companies loads of profit, they're being set that way to indeed protect profit but also to protect from volatile wholesale gas prices. That's why they won't let you onto a fixed tariff because if they stick you on a fixed tariff and gas goes up 10% this month then multiply that by millions of people and well they're bankrupt.

Some people might have influence to fix prices but I think you're reading too much into it because we have a price cap to stop that which is set by an independent regulator. If it was just our dodgy government or people related to gas companies then the excessive prices would only be happening here but it isn't it's happening all over Europe.

Like I said the one thing we could do to make prices cheaper is to start burning coal again but I suppose that would upset people so we'll have to just pay more. Energy security has been a big problem over the last 2 decades, we should of built several nuclear powerplants 10 years ago to replace the coal plants but we didn't so here we are.
 
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RobMCFC said:
I think the figure that they are quoting you is just to put you off taking a deal. They expect everybody to drop onto the standard variable rate at the moment because the energy companies know they cant offer you a deal that will beat that.
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They don’t want you on the SVR.
They are losing money on it.
 
inbetween said:
Some people might have influence to fix prices but I think you're reading too much into it because we have a price cap to stop that which is set by an independent regulator. If it was just our dodgy government or people related to gas companies then the excessive prices would only be happening here but it isn't it's happening all over Europe.

Like I said the one thing we could do to make prices cheaper is to start burning coal again but I suppose that would upset people so we'll have to just pay more. Energy security has been a big problem over the last 2 decades, we should of built several nuclear powerplants 10 years ago to replace the coal plants but we didn't so here we are.
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I see what you’re saying mate, so the price caps that were set by the independent regulator, are they the same as what the energy companies recommended/advised/wanted ?

Totally agree with you on the second point though, we should have invested in Solar/wind/hydro/nuclear options long ago, as I said earlier though, we hit a gas vein that gave us at least another 50 years supply in the North Sea (no doubt we’ll find others too) so the people with a financial interest in fossil fuel will be happy to chug along, seems there’s no real incentive to move forward, but we’re going to have to one day.
 
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